There's some information in the National Transit Database about maintenance and other things that Metro Transit pays for, but a lot of the money goes into a big payment to BNSF for their role operating the trains. I haven't asked anyone at Metro Transit about getting more info, but I've been pessimistic about getting an answer.

I stopped in downtown Elk River for a brief moment on my way home from St. Cloud. Downtown is literally across the highway (but a 30 MPH urban stroad in this place) from the BNSF mainline. But how far of a walk to the station? Nearly an hour, if you want to not-walk-on-a-freeway.

Yes, this is one of my biggest complaints about the line. I wish they would have chosen a spot next to the town center, but they're trying some level of TOD around the station that did get built, so it's hard to justify moving it at this point. When/if Northstar trains turn into DMUs or EMUs, it might make sense to add another station downtown.

I believe there had been a plan to add a bike path close to the railroad, but I think neighborhood opposition ended up nixing the idea. That could shorten the route by a couple tenths of a mile, but I'm not sure how useful that would be since it goes through the power station and other relatively unused land. At least the Twin Lakes Road route goes past some businesses. Still, I think they ought to do something to make a better path to the center of town -- seems like someone will get killed walking/biking along U.S. 10 someday, if it hasn't happened already.

When/if Northstar trains turn into DMUs or EMUs, it might make sense to add another station downtown.

Has this ever been brought up as a serious possibility? I thought they needed the massive trains because they share tracks with freight.

We (mostly me) have talked some about this recently here and in the St Cloud extension thread and probably elsewhere, but there are FRA compliant DMUs finally, and there's always the hope that FRA rules get reformed to allow off the self foreign trains to be operated here.

American rail safety is primarily about making sure people survive when trains collide, while European and Japanese rail safety is about making sure trains don't collide with each other in the first place.

Also, the double tracking between Becker and Big Lake looked complete, though maybe they're still working on the signalling... both tracks were flashing yellow signals over that section in the direction of my travel, across all the blocks I could see.

Sounds like lots of people decided taking the train would be way easier than driving home in this mess. Makes you wonder if Northstar could be more successful if we just stopped making driving easier in this corridor. It obviously works for people, just not as well as driving.

Sounds like lots of people decided taking the train would be way easier than driving home in this mess. Makes you wonder if Northstar could be more successful if we just stopped making driving easier in this corridor. It obviously works for people, just not as well as driving.

Sounds like a great topic for a street.mn post to me (which I'm not going to write).

I was only drawing attention to the fact that a Republican lawmaker is advocating for the completion on this route, I kind of figure the green and blue line extensions are going to happen with little struggle? Maybe I'm optimistic. I just really want the north star to be completed to finally discover if regional rail can be successful in our region when it connects destination to destination.

Knoblach's bill doesn't include any funding for an expansion, and prohibits the state from spending any more on operating costs than already budgeted. But he says he doesn't anticipate any additional cost to run the trains an additional 27 miles to the Amtrak station in St. Cloud.

The plan is to do it for no extra money, by removing one round trip from the existing service and extending two remaining round trips to St. Cloud, thus keeping the total daily train mileage approximately the same. Assuming that operational costs actually scale linearly with mileage, I guess that might work? Since BNSF runs the train, do they actually just charge a per-mile fee to the Met Council? In addition to barring the state from spending any more operating dollars than they currently are, the bill also prohibits the state from spending any capital dollars, so the St. Cloud station would be the Amtrak station (with it's 20-space dirt parking lot), and there would be no Becker or Clear Lake stations unless some other funding source pops up.